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I Heart Press!

January 5, 2012|By David Lester

Hi everyone and Happy New Year!  This January I’m going to walk people through my process of budgeting and how you need to get excited about what you are saving for in order to be good at it.  Keep checking back while I use myself as an example of how to budget. My strategy that I write about and outline in my book is now available to retail investors!  Managed by Gordon Higgins, of Higgins Investment Group, there will now be a managed portfolio that ACTIVELY sells options on an underlying blue chip dividend portfolio.  It’ll be called DCL Capital Option Income Portfolio and I’ll be writing about in next week but you can find out more right now at dclcapital.com. I was in the Montreal Gazette last week and the Vancouver Sun and Windsor Star this week.  Here is the article below.  I concur with John’s opinion.  Everyone should run out and buy my book!  I Heart John Archer! Have an awesome week, Dave

Budgeting will help make money love you back

BY JOHN ARCHER, FREELANCEDECEMBER 31, 2011
David Campbell Lester loves money. And his money loves him back. At age 34, he is independently wealthy, has a swanky condo, is able to live the life he chooses (lots of long, exotic vacations,) and have the job he wants (being a money coach and author). He has decided to share his success with managing money through his recently self-published book “I (Heart) Money” published by DCL Capital Press. This is the perfect New Year’s resolution guide for someone who should love their money more and wants to get their financial life back on track. Lester’s book focuses on goal setting and budgeting while also dispensing other diverse advice such as shopping effectively (“I almost never buy something unless it is on sale”) to the best type of life insurance (“the only insurance to get is term insurance”). While budgeting is akin to dental surgery to many, Lester approaches this in a way that is both painless and practical. He includes budgeting exercises that are easy to complete and which help you identify misguided spending that, when redirected, can result in better allocation of assets and income. “Writing it down in black and white is half the battle towards being a master at budgeting. The same principle applies to your goals,” says Lester. His ‘life status’ section allows you to identify your core values and to prioritize your life while also providing you with tracking tools to chalk up your achievements. These chapters alone make the book worthwhile. Lester is pro-cash and makes the case that paying for purchases with cash instead of using credit cards will save you 20 per cent per year. He feels that more discounts are granted for cash transactions and that the fees for credit cards negate their point accumulation benefits. He believes that “credit cards encourage bad behaviour.” He points out that if the balance is not paid off promptly each month, then the item purchased such as “a $10 T-shirt will end up costing $22.88 after 5 years.” He also feels that using cash limits your spending. Lester suggests if you have trouble forking cash over for a certain purchase, maybe you don’t really need or want that item after all. Man, if that were the case, I may never spend another nickel again! Lester is a self-confessed money monger. “I check my accounts several times daily. Every penny must be accounted for or I cannot sleep at night.” He will not hesitate to argue with his bank to have a 60-cent charge reversed if it has been done in error. Maybe he needs a few more hobbies. Lester also dedicates a chapter to managing your own investments. He asserts that “the biggest lie coming from Wall St. and Bay St. is that we cannot manage our investments ourselves.” You might want to skip over this chapter as this is clearly insane advice (says he who makes his living by giving such advice). He claims by managing your own investments you will save two to three per cent in fees per year. This may be true, but is he going to be there to advise you when you should be tweaking “your own index portfolio?” In the portfolio he drafts out for readers, complete with recommended weightings, there are a few clunkers he may want to white out before he ships his next batch of books. Fortunes can change for stocks, even blue chips that pay (or paid) dividends. He does offer practical solutions to paying off your debt while still living your life: “Do something that you love in order to make more money” (Lester does TV extra work from time to time for extra cash); “ask for more money at work; get a head hunter to find you a better job; learn to blog and sell advertising space like me.” In addition to selling his book, Lester blogs at iheart money.ca, as well offers oneon-one money coaching (mainly to small business owners like himself and at $225 per hour) and lectures to investor groups. Whatever he does is a labour of love with dividends galore. Buy David Campbell Lester’s book. He (heart)s your money, too! John Archer is an investment adviser with RBC Dominion Securities in Montreal and will be spending his New Year’s Eve counting his pennies. john.archer@rbc.com

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
David Lester
About David Lester

David Lester is a best selling author and professional Financial Coach, helping people be better with their money. David has written a personal finance book that breaks with traditional attitudes towards finance and describes his own philosophy to money that he has gained through his personal and professional experiences. His philosophy on money applies to many areas of everyday life, including banking, investing, goal setting, shopping and entertainment.